


Bad Wolf's Sentinel

by Bythia



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s02e02 Sleeper, Gwen Cooper Bashing, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26751694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bythia/pseuds/Bythia
Summary: In the time Jack is coming from, Sentinels and Guides are thought to be extinct, but he knew there would be an uprising in their population during the 21st century. Coming back from the Year That Never Was, hurting from the rejection of the Doctor and the year-long torture at the hands of the Master, he is in no way prepared to come online as a Sentinel or to find his Guide he will never be able to bond with in the man he has yearned for to come back to for the whole year of his captivity.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 6
Kudos: 125
Collections: Rough Trade Presents: The Year of the Sentinel - 2020





	Bad Wolf's Sentinel

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first RT project from July 2020. I loved to write this story and I love how it has turned out!
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters or anything of this world. I just borrowed them to play a little bit, and I don't make money with the stories I borrowed them for. But the words are mine, so please don't copy them to use them as your own.
> 
> Have fun,  
> Bythia

There was nothing Ianto hated more than to wait for Jack to come back to life. To feel him die was hard, but to feel him come back to life was in most cases pure anguish because Jack would go through all the hurt of the healing of his wounds in mere seconds. To have to feel the void Jack’s death left in the emotional landscape around him and at the same time to have to wait for the torturous moment of his awakening was the most terrible thing Ianto had ever experienced.

The whole team was subdued while they busied themselves with the preparations to freeze Beth again. For a while, they had all been relieved and joyful, but that had faded away fast. They had been lucky this time around because Beth’s self-preservation had given them a minuscule forewarning and it had all happened in Cardiff. But these invaders had nothing to do with the Rift and there could easily be another cell somewhere else on Earth even now.

Jack had bled out on the way back to the Hub. Gwen had reported that Jack had died not too long before they had reached the Hub and with the extensive blood loss it would probably be a while until Jack came back. They had brought him to the sofa in his office and Ianto had freed him of his bloody clothes and cleaned him of most of the rest of the blood.

Ianto kept close to the office in the hope he could be there for Jack when he woke up again. He would feel Jack coming back a few seconds before he actually regained consciousness and in the weeks since Jack’s return, it had become something of a habit for Ianto to stay with Jack until he came back to life.

It took a lot longer for Jack to come back alive than Ianto had expected, and when it happened, it came with the shocking realization that Jack had changed. Ianto staggered, as he felt the first sign of Jack in the emotional landscape of the Hub and recognized a new Sentinel at the same time.

It took a mere second for Ianto to regain his bearing and rush into the office. He reached Jack just a moment after he drove up, snapping for air. His arms were flailing and it was clear that he was disorientated and probably had no idea where he was.

“Jack!”

Ianto grabbed his shoulders, the first time in a very long time unsure of his own abilities, as he tried to wrap Jack in a soothing Guide-aura. He had not been around a lot of Sentinels since he had come back to Cardiff, much less distressed Sentinels. He had no idea what was even wrong with Jack and so could not even begin to guess how to help him.

Jack recoiled from his hands and when Ianto followed him he lashed out violently, knocking the younger man on his ass. It was not the first time Jack reacted in such a way since he had come back, but hitherto such a reaction had thrown him out of whichever state he had been in. Not this time, though.

“Jack, can you hear me?”

In Ianto grew the suspicion that Jack had probably no control over most of his senses. His eyes were darting from one point to another, but he evidently could not make out anything of his surroundings. And he did show no reaction at all to Ianto’s words, there was not even any sign of reaction to the noise.

Ianto scrambled to his feet and backed away to the door without taking his eyes off Jack. “Owen! We need something to help Jack calm down! Something Sentinel-friendly!”

Jack had dropped down from the sofa and was still flailing aimlessly. His whole body was convulsing and Ianto was not sure if Jack was aware of anything happening around him.

“What?”

“Jack’s come online and is completely out of it. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know where he is!”

He did not wait for another reply from the doctor, before he stepped back into the office, desperately searching for something to help Jack. It had been years since he had had any kind of training in his own abilities and he had completely shut them down and ignored them for most of the last one and a half years.

Before Ianto could make any kind of decision, Owen rushed into the office, closely followed by Gwen. Ianto furrowed his brows, but he saw Tosh stand at her workstation, meeting his gaze with worry, but keeping near Beth. They did not need their guest unsupervised in the Hub, even with her real personality subdued.

“I need help to keep him down!” Owen’s shout drew his attention back to the rest of his team. “What the hell happened?”

“I’m not sure.” Ianto grabbed Jack’s legs, as Gwen was already half leaning on his chest. “He woke up and was online. I fear he has no control over his senses at all and probably no idea what’s happening.”

Owen shook his head frowning. “Jack’s not a Sentinel.”

“He wasn’t, but now he is!”

“How would you know this?” Owen asked, at the same time as Gwen said, “That’s impossible!”

“I felt him come online!” Ianto said through gritted teeth.

“Right.” Owen snorted. “We don’t have time for your delusions, Jones. Keep him in place. I’ll sedate him, then we’ll have time to figure out what happened with him.” The doctor opened the case he had brought with him and started to prepare an injection.

Ianto watched him sceptical. “Is that Sentinel-friendly?”

Owen rolled his eyes. “No need for that!”

“Jack’s not the first Sentinel I’ve felt come online! In the state he is in, regular drugs could kill him!” Ianto insisted.

“There is no chance Jack has come online! Just shut up and let me do my job, okay?”

“Owen!” Ianto had thought they had overcome this whole mess where Owen, and Gwen too, for the most part, dismissed his contributions for one reason or another. As hard as the months without Jack had been, Ianto had thought the team had grown to something more of a unit.

When Owen just continued with his preparation, Ianto stood up and took several steps back.

“Ianto!” Gwen sent him a dark look.

“I’m not helping you kill Jack!”

Gwen scoffed. “It won’t kill him. There is no way that Jack is a Sentinel. They are extinct in the time he is coming from!”

“And yet he is,” Ianto muttered.

He swallowed hard, as Owen injected something into Jack's neck and was anything but surprised when the seizures started only moments later. When they stopped and Ianto felt Jack slip away again it felt like all the air was sucked right out of his lungs. To feel Jack die had never before been so intense or painful. His knees buckled under him, but he did not feel them impact with the floor, fighting too desperately against his inability to breathe.

“What the fuck?”

Ianto backed away as Owen hurried to him. “Don’t!” He took a deep breath as his lungs started to work again. “I’m okay. Just … a little overwhelmed. - I told you it would kill him!”

“You are a Guide!” Owen sounded flabbergasted.

Ianto could feel shock from both of them and something other from Gwen, something very ugly he could not quite place at the moment. “I’m a Guide, how surprising.”

“You never told us!” Owen accused. “And it’s not in your file.”

“Of course it is not in my medical file you scavenged out of the remains of Torchwood One.” Ianto scoffed. “There was a good reason why Yvonne Hartmann didn’t want Sentinels or Guides working for her. - But you should have known it never the less after one look at the list of all the medicine I’m intolerant too!”

“You should have told us!” Gwen said outraged.

Owen sneered. “Not the first time Tea Boy is keeping secrets.”

“I’m not obliged to reveal my status to anyone. There are a lot of laws governing my right to keep quiet about it,” Ianto replied. “Not my fault you aren’t able to read a medical file, Owen. - But me being a Guide is not the problem at the moment. Do you have anything Sentinel-friendly to help Jack if he wakes up in the same state as just now?”

“I don’t know how Jack could be a Sentinel,” Gwen protested. “He told me there were neither Sentinels nor Guides still alive in his time!”

Owen frowned. “That’s what he told me, too. - And yes, I have something I can give him.”

“One hundred years ago Sentinels and Guides were thought to be nearly extinct. Then the great wars happened and since then our numbers are slowly but steadily growing again.” Ianto shrugged. “Just because Jack was taught they were extinct doesn’t mean it has to be true. There could be so few left that they are basically just not known any more.”

Owen looked back to Jack with a frown. “He is probably right because this injection shouldn’t have killed Jack. - We need to prepare Beth for the cryo-chamber.” He stood up and send Ianto a dark look. “You’ll call me as soon as he wakes up.”

Ianto shrugged and stayed where he was. He was grateful that Owen took Gwen with him, instructing her to talk with Beth even though Gwen was quietly protesting the fact that they were leaving Jack alone with Ianto. He had seen glimpses of a lot of her bigotries and he did not look forward to being confronted with them personally once more.

As soon as he was alone with Jack, Ianto went down into the bunker under the office which Jack called his home. For some reason that Jack had never wanted to discuss he kept all of his things Sentinel-friendly and now Ianto was eternally relieved about it. He took two of the fresh sheets with him, one to put on the sofa and the other as a blanket for Jack.

There had been a rash on Jack’s back and shoulders and Ianto hoped that it would help him to wake up with his surroundings a little more accommodating to his new circumstances. After he had put Jack back on the sofa and tucked him in, he dimmed the lights in the office. He had to hope it was enough because there was nothing he could do about the noises of the Hub or the quality of the air.

Just a moment after Ianto had stepped out of the office, the mood in the Hub shifted drastically. As his thoughts were still occupied with Jack’s new situation, Ianto needed a second to spot Beth, who held her into a blade transfigured arm against Gwen’s throat. Owen and Tosh were already pointing their guns at Beth and Ianto followed them suit even though he stood at a very bad angle, with Gwen nearly between him and Beth.

“Don’t shoot!” Gwen shouted. “She won’t hurt me!”

Beth cocked her head. “I’ll kill you.”

Ianto frowned and tried to get an impression of her emotions. He was pretty sure that Beth was faking it, that she wanted them to shoot her so the threat she posed would be eliminated, otherwise, Gwen would already be dead. But there were no emotions coming from her at all.

“First I’ll kill you, then your team and then every pathetic creature on this planet.”

Before Ianto could catalogue the emotional void from Beth, he felt Jack come back to life. And this time he was alert, maybe a little bit disoriented, but he honed in on the danger in less than a second. Ianto took a step aside, knowing better than to stand in the way of a Sentinel in a protective drive.

“Don’t do this, Beth!” Gwen pleaded. “We’ll find a way to help you! Please give us a chance! You don’t need to sacrifice yourself!”

Ianto felt Jack pass him by and saw him in the corner of his eyes climb up the stairs. In the very moment Beth raised her blade, he reached the last step and jumped at her, shoving Gwen out of the way. Both women cried out in shock, but Beth’ voice died abruptly as Jack grabbed her head with both hands and twisted it in a swift move, breaking her neck.  
Ianto shuddered, but put his gun down and rushed up the stairs.

“You didn’t need to kill her!” Gwen shouted. She sat where she had fallen, staring pale and wide-eyed at the body between her and Jack.

“She tried to kill you,” Ianto said quietly, as Jack did not react to Gwen. He was silently scanning the rest of the Hub, probably making sure that Beth had been the only threat.

“She was bluffing!” Gwen protested. “She wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“We can’t know that.” Jack looked down at her with a stony expression.

“And even if it is the case, I gave her the death she wanted. She knew that we couldn’t safely detain her. She chose death over the danger of becoming something that would kill as many people as possible.”  
Ianto took a deep breath. “How are you feeling, Jack?”

“I’m…” Jack frowned. “What happened?”

Gwen scoffed. “Ianto spouted some nonsense about you coming online as a Sentinel.”

“That’s not…” Jack blinked. “You felt me come online?”

Ianto nodded. “The very moment you came back to life.” He paused. “The first time around.”

~*~*~*~*~

Jack knew something had changed, something was wrong with him when he woke up. He distinctly remembered coming back to life once before, trapped in pain and darkness and silence. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was lying down on something soft, he would have feared to be still trapped on the Valiant where on some days one death had chased the other. Before he had time to take in the changes he could feel he heard Beth threaten his team and for a while, a new, unknown instinct took over his body. He let it happen without a fight, let himself be guided by this instinct to protect until Beth lay dead at his feet and he was sure that there was no other threat to his team inside his Hub.

Ianto’s question shook him out of this alerted state and his first reaction was denial when Gwen told him of Ianto’s suspicion. It was partly her condescending tone and partly the reminder that Ianto would actually have felt him come online that let him pause.

He wished he could contradict it. It should not be possible for him to have come online as a Sentinel. But he could hear the heartbeat of all four of his teammates and those of Myfanwy and Janet. As much as he wanted to, he could not deny the change in his perception.

“There hadn’t been any Sentinels or Guides left for more than five hundred years when I was born.”

“That’s what I told him!” Gwen agreed.

Ianto rolled his eyes. “That you knew about. Doesn’t mean there weren’t any who just weren’t reported to the whole universe or were even recognized.”

“Right.” Jack rubbed his forehead with his hand. He needed time to get a hold of this whole clusterfuck. And probably help to sort through all the new impressions his senses seemed to bombard him with. “We have work to do.”

Gwen interrupted him, “You don’t actually believe this crap, do you? You can’t be a Sentinel, Jack!”

Jack frowned. “And yet I hear your heart beating, and even Janet’s heartbeat down in the vaults. I think this is a dead give away that Ianto is right in his assessment. And as he is the only one here who can actually be sure about it, I wouldn’t doubt him even I wasn’t hearing things I shouldn’t.”

“You knew that he is a Guide?”

There was something other than disbelief in Gwen’s voice that Jack couldn’t place. “Ianto wasn’t exactly trying to keep it a secret just because he wasn’t talking about it. It’s his right not to talk about it. It’s probably not the first time you have worked with a Sentinel or Guide without knowing them as such. - Owen, Tosh, I want a thorough analysis of Beth’s body and the technology in her body. It would be really great if we found a way to detect her kind. Gwen, you’ll come up with a cover story for her disappearance. Check with the hospital if they could save Mike and if you have to factor in that he has to believe it, too. Ianto, you are with me.”

“Jack!” Gwen protested. “You can’t just…”

“It would do you good to remember that I’m still the boss around here!” Jack snapped. He had grown really tired of her behaviour since he had come back, but at this moment it felt for the first time absolutely intolerable. “And to remember that you are actually the most junior agent in this group.”

Gwen gawked at him wide-eyed. It was no surprise, really, after all the times that he let her get away with these things for the most part. He was no longer sure why he had done it, but it would stop. And the brief relief he saw on the faces of Ianto, and Tosh, and even Owen as he looked down to them, told him that he should have taken this step a long time ago.

“We have all work to do!” he reminded his team, before descending into his office and taking Ianto with him. He saw Owen and Tosh reach Gwen and help her back up on her feet as he closed the door.

“Has someone called the police and the military to tell them that all members of this terrorist group are dead?” Jack asked while putting on the trousers and the shirt, that were laying on his desk.

Ianto nodded. “I spoke with them while Gwen was driving you back. The General wants to talk to you as soon as possible about the breach in their security.”

Jack scoffed. “You did tell him that we were just following the terrorists, right?”

Ianto shrugged. “He probably thinks of me as not much more than a secretary and such things aren’t discussed with lowly secretaries.”

“Let’s find out who his CO is and I’ll give them a call, so I don’t have to have this discussion with a lowly general.” Jack grinned when Ianto snickered. “Tell me what happened, please.”

Ianto dropped down on the sofa and sighed. “You had bled out on the way back and were probably dead for something like half an hour. The moment you came back, I felt that you were online. I’m not sure if you were even aware, but I think you had zero control over your senses. As I couldn’t help you, I called for Owen. Who didn’t believe me about you being a Sentinel and subsequently killed you, because he gave you the wrong kind of drug. The next time you came back, you were in control of your body, but I’m not sure if it was because I had tried to put you in better circumstances or because of the imminent threat to Gwen or something else altogether.”

“I’m not looking forward to testing this out,” Jack muttered. He sat down on the edge of his desk and crossed his arm. He was not looking forward to a lot of things that would come with being a Sentinel.

Ianto stared at some point in front of Jacks feet. “Me neither.”

“There are ways to suppress the senses, right?” It would be the easiest solution to the problem. And Jack did see his being a Sentinel as one big giant problem. The question in which state he would come back to life was only the tip of that iceberg.

“Not long term.” Ianto shook his head. “There is no such thing as voluntary dormancy. And even if there was … Your body resets completely when you come back to life, doesn’t it?”

Jack nodded with furrowed brows.

“Dying didn’t make you go dormant. It stands to reason, that being online is your new normal. We should probably assume that whatever you do to suppress your senses will be reset as soon as you die.”

“That’s really not what I wanted to hear,” Jack muttered darkly.  
“It’s not a bad thing to be a Sentinel,” Ianto protested.

Jack scoffed. “I’m sure there are some positive things to his whole cluster fuck. But at the moment the list of problems is so long, I can’t even begin to see anything positive.”

Ianto regarded him with a sad smile. “You’ll need training. I can get into contact with the community if you like.” He sighed. “For both of us, probably. Obviously, I’m not able to get my abilities back under control on my own.”

“When did you start to use them again after Canary Wharf?”

Jack had long suspected that Ianto had shut down anything to do with his Guide gifts on that day. He could not see how the young man would have come out of that day alive and much less sane if he had not cut off his empathy. And it was the only explanation why he had not recognized that Lisa had been dead long before he had gotten Tanizaki into the Hub.

Ianto averted his gaze. “During this whole disaster with the cannibals. Not the best decision I ever made, but I needed to be sure that Tosh would do what I wanted her to do. - It let me recoil from it for a few more months, but it also taught me that I needed to establish an empathic connection to all of you.”

“Fuck.” Jack carded his fingers through his hair. He did not even want to think about Ianto subjecting himself to the emotions of those monsters. “You need to be more careful with yourself!”

“You have to talk!” Ianto scoffed. “You let yourself be killed fairly regularly since you came back!”

Jack just shrugged. He had died so many times in the year on the Valiant that it really did not matter anymore. It was still an ugly feeling, it still hurt like nothing else, but it had become as easy as breathing nevertheless.

“Do you remember what you told me after … after Lisa?”, Ianto asked. “You were right, you know? It does help to talk. And I’m more than willing to return the favour of listening.”

Jack shook his head. He would never want for Ianto to have to hear the things he would have to say about that year. “There is nothing to talk about.” He would find a way to live with it without talking about it. He had to because he would never want to burden anyone with this knowledge, much less Ianto.

“Okay.”

It hurt to see Ianto retreat behind the polite smile he had worn steadily when he had first become part of the team. On the Valiant, Jack had created this fantasy of his relationship to Ianto being so much more than it had been. He had needed something to hold onto and the memory of Ianto had been the most robust of his choices. He just wished it would be easier to let go of this fantasy now.

Ianto sighed, probably very aware of Jack’s distress. “How are your senses?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m good. No sensory spikes. But then, I’m not really using them, right? I’m just letting them be as they are. … I’m probably a little bit too focused to keep track of all of you. It’s hard to ignore Gwen’s bitching out there.”

“She has a real problem with Guides and Sentinels.”  
“I noticed.” Jack frowned. “And I don’t know how she got through Hendon with this attitude. Most of the Sentinels and Guides work in the police forces. She has to have worked with others in the past.”

“You let her get away with a lot of things in the past that won’t be easy for you to tolerate from now on,” Ianto cautioned. “Sentinels are … driven to protect whomever they call their own even from threats within this group. And she repeatedly did put the team or part of it in danger.”

“It’s a headache to come.” Jack sighed defeated. “But I’m aware that I created this situation, so it’s only fair that I have to find a way to resolve it. It’s not your problem to solve. I’ll talk with her in a little while. Today.”

Ianto snorted. “That won’t save me from being confronted by her. Or by Owen for that matter.”

There was probably nothing he could do to prevent that and he knew Ianto could fight his own battles. It was a little bit disconcerting for Jack, that he had to fight the urge to put himself between Ianto and any kind of threat or even discomfort. He had started to develop these kinds of feelings shortly before the debacle with Billis Manger and Abandon and just tried to ignore it. But they had been rapidly amplified in the last half an hour since he woke up.

“I have not the best contact to the Sentinel and Guide community here in Cardiff anymore,” Ianto continued. “I kind of avoided them after I came here and they let me get away with it. But someone will make themselves available if I tell them there is a newly online Sentinel.”

“They know about me.” Jack took a deep breath. “There was really no chance to keep it a secret from them and at least I knew that none of them would get the idea to experiment on me. But I have had no regular contact with them since I took over Torchwood here. There would have been nothing else that would have made Hartmann come here quicker.”

It had been hard enough to keep himself out of Yvonne Hartmann’s clutches after Alex had killed the whole team. He had avoided everything that would have made her more suspicious of him, and contact to the Sentinels and Guides of Cardiff had been one of the first points on this list.

Ianto bit his lip. “Do you know why I joined Torchwood One?”

Jack frowned. “No.” He had never even thought about it, even though it was suspicious to find a Guide working for Torchwood One.

“I was there on the behalf of the community in London. There are a lot more of us in London than here in Cardiff. When Yvonne Hartmann became the director of Torchwood, the organisation began to withdraw from any other organisation in London, citing they were only beholden to the Queen. It made a lot of people very suspicious and uncomfortable.” Ianto sighed. “Hartmann had made contact with me without knowing that I was a Guide. I was asked by the Sentinel and Guide community to use the opportunity to get them an inside into Torchwood One. When Canary Wharf happened we were nearly ready to petition her Majesty for an intervention.”

Jack laughed wholeheartedly. “You were a spy! I can’t believe it, but that’s great! And it was sorely needed.”

“Didn’t make a difference.”

Jack sobered up immediately. “You were the only one, right? That alone is … they should have never sent you in there alone. And One was fucking huge. Much bigger than it was ever intended to be. - There was ample reason for the Crown to step in long before Canary Wharf and I don’t know why no one did.”

“If you say so,” Ianto muttered. “I had heard of you, of course. From Hartmann, but from the Sentinels and Guides I was working with, too. They trust you. That’s the reason why I came here. - It’s probably high time to establish a working relationship with them. They could help us in a lot of situations.”

Jack nodded. He had thought so for a long time, but since the fall of One he had found no time to plan an appropriate approach. Maybe there actually was something positive about him becoming a Sentinel, and if it was just to have an excuse to sit down for a long talk with whoever was leading the Sentinel and Guide Community in Cardiff these days.

~*~*~*~*~

After Ianto had left to meet with some bonded pair, the first thing Jack did was take a shower. He had learned to hate the feeling of dried blood on his skin, but there had been more important things to do than to clean himself right away. Jack knew from past experiences that this part of his problems would fade soon, while others would stay with him for month or years.

Someone – probably Ianto – hat freed him of his ruined clothes and cleaned off most of the blood, but it just was not enough. He needed to feel clean and the possible problem a shower could be to his senses had not crossed his mind until he had already stood under the warm water. He turned up the hot water and only when he saw his skin turning red without feeling the heat it registered to him, that he had turned down his sense of hot and cold without meaning to do so. He adjusted the water and hoped his senses would do so themselves without his interference because he had no idea what he would have to do otherwise.

He would still like to deny his coming online. The history of humans was pervaded with stories about Sentinels and Guides, but they had slowly vanished when humans had blended with other races. He had learned in school that this legacy had been lost to the advancement that had led them to leave earth.

If there was still potential for Sentinels and Guides to emerge, then why had there been none when Boeshane had been invaded? That had been his first thought when Ianto had confirmed that he had felt him come online. Why had he not come online when it could have helped him protect his brother? Or when he had had to witness the torture of his best friend, while they had been held captive by the enemy?

Why now?

And then there was the problem with his immortality. How would it affect his senses when he died the next time? How would he learn to live with the yearning for a Guide if he could never bond to one? And with his circumstances, he could never risk a bond.

It made him angrier than anything else in this situation. He had come back with the plan to make something more out of the arrangement he had had with Ianto. It had started as sex to get over Ianto’s grief and had morphed to companionship after their trip to the Brecon Beacons. And it had started to get something more in the last weeks.

He had wanted to take this chance for the first time since Lucia. He had come back to take this chance. And now it had been taken away from him by a biological quirk that he could have used so many times when he had still been mortal and that now would just be a curse. He would never be able to have any kind of sexual or romantic relationship with a guide because he would not risk a bond.

Jack left the shower feeling clean but not better at all. He wished for time to digest his situation, but when he came back into his office Gwen was waiting there for him. Her face spoke volumes and for a moment he just wanted to send her away. But he had promised Ianto to speak with her today and that would not get easier if he sent her away first.

Jack sat down behind his desk and looked her over. Finally, he said, “How nice of you to wait for me.”

“Where is Ianto?” Gwen asked.

“He is running an errand for me.”

Gwen frowned. “Do you think that is a good idea?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” Jack wanted to know.

Gwen huffed. “He is a Guide, Jack! And he didn’t tell anyone, again! I don’t think we should trust him!”

“And it’s your decision who deserves trust on this team and who does not?”

“How can we be sure that he didn’t manipulate us from the start?” Gwen asked. “He lied about this Cyberman and risked all of our lives. Now he’s lied about what he is. A Guide can’t be trusted!”

“I would have thought you would have learned enough about Guides in Hendon to know better. There are courses about Sentinels and Guides, aren’t there?”

Gwen scoffed. “They were mandatory, so I couldn’t get out of them. A bunch of bullshit, if you ask me. I bet none of the instructors has ever met one of them.”

“And you have?” Jack asked. “Where are you taking your knowledge from?”

“My grandfather was a Sentinel. He came online during the war and had a bond forced on him. He had to bring this Guide he was bonded to into the home of my mother when he came back. She had to watch while this man destroyed her family!”

Jack shook his head. He had seen a lot of such cases after both wars and every single time it had been the inability of the spouses to accept the change in their partners that had destroyed the families. It was the rigid view on relationships of this time period and Jack had never been able to understand the resentment of these spouses, but it was them society was supporting even so no one would ever get the idea to deny a Sentinel or Guide their bond.

“How much contact did you have to your grandfather?” he asked.

“None. He had left the family long before I was born.” Gwen’s voice was vibrating with loathing. “He left my grandmother alone with three children because he preferred his Guide.”

“So, all you have are the memories of your grandmother and mother, which are full of resentment.” Jack braced his arms on his desk. “I assure you, would you have searched for your grandfather and his Guide, you would have found them very near to your family and keeping an eye on you. Even now he will know exactly where every one of his children and grandchildren is, how they are doing, what they are doing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was by your graduation from school and Hendon, even so, you have never met him. Sentinels and Guides don’t leave their families behind. The only reason, that there was no direct contact would have been that your grandmother and her children didn’t want to have contact with your grandfather.”

Gwen scoffed. “Right. You are supposedly a Sentinel for not even two hours and already you are an expert?”

“You are neither Sentinel nor Guide and obviously you think yourself some kind of expert,” Jack rebuffed. “You should not forget that I have gone the slow way from 1869 to today. I have served in both World Wars and have seen action in a number of other conflicts in the last one and a half centuries. I have seen Sentinels and Guides come online on and off the battlefield. A lot of them were my friends and I have seen families break just like yours because of the mundane partner's selfishness and inability to adapt.”

He should probably expect a call or even a visit from Gwen’s grandfather with re-establishing contact to the community. Guides and Sentinels, especially bonded ones, had an average lifespan of forty or fifty years more than a mundane so her grandfather and his Guide should still be alive.

“That’s bullshit propaganda!” Gwen protested. “And I don’t even know why these people are so sheltered and protected!”

Jack sighed. Why had this deep-rooted hatred for Sentinels and Guide not shown up in her background check? Prejudices such as this were never easily overcome and to need to overcome them in their line of work was a big obstacle. Gwen must have held her opinion back on this matter for the whole time she was training to become a police officer and even after starting to work for the police of Cardiff. The forces took great care to weed out recruits with that kind of bigotries.

“Whatever Ianto did to make you think anything has changed with your senses, we’ll find a way to break it!” Gwen sounded so sincere and convinced.

Jack snorted. “That’s not how a Guide’s abilities work.”

“They can sense and manipulate our emotions, right?” Gwen frowned. “That does explain why no one protested him staying after his girlfriend nearly killed us! You should have fired him without question back then instead of coddling him as you did.”

“How can you be able to want to understand a bunch of strangers who intended to eat you, but show not one ounce of compassion to a teammate who has gone through a traumatizing situation?” Jack had wondered about that since Gwen had sat down in front of that man in the Brecon Beacons and actually started to talk to him.

“He put _us_ through a traumatizing situation!”

Jack shook his head and leaned back. “I don’t know what to do with you, Gwen.”

“What?”

“Will you be able to keep working here, with your boss a Sentinel and his second a Guide? Will you be able to overcome your prejudices?”, Jack asked.

Gwen sneered. “And since when is Ianto your second?”

“Since the day Suzie died and Tosh didn’t want the job.” Jack raised his eyebrows. “I have no idea what happened here in the months I was gone and why apparently you took over the reins. That was not part of the instructions I had left for my departure. You don’t have the experience to even temporarily lead this team.”

“But Ianto or Tosh do?” Gwen asked.

“They have worked for Torchwood the longest time. But we are not here to discuss my decisions.” He raised his hands to stop her from protesting. “I have made great mistakes with allowing you this behaviour in the past, and this will stop. - Will you be able to overcome your damn prejudices and work for me now that I am a Sentinel?”

“You can’t be a Sentinel! You told me yourself that they were extinct in your time!”

Jack shrugged. “Obviously I was mistaken. I will get the training I need and we’ll hopefully get a little bit of help around here.”

“Do you really want to risk telling them about the Rift and the aliens?” Gwen asked appalled.

Jack laughed. “Do you really think it is a secret to any Sentinel or Guide in this city? Even when there were only one bonded pair and one other Sentinel here one hundred years ago they knew about Torchwood and the Rift. There is no way we could have kept this a secret from them, so we didn’t even try.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I am.” Jack crossed his arms. “You haven’t answered my question, Gwen.”

Instead of answering, she stood up. “You are making a mistake!”

“So, your answer is No.” That was not what he had expected and not what he had wished for. It would be a problem. “I think you should take a little bit of time to think about this. Go home, spend two days with your fiancé. And overthink this decision, please.”

“You should go to a doctor who has no relations with any Sentinels or Guides. Maybe they could help you find out what Ianto has done,” Gwen insisted.

“Go home, Gwen. I’ll see you back here in three days and we’ll try this whole conversation another time.”

Gwen huffed but left without another word.

Jack rubbed his hands over his face. This day had already been so long and it got more frustrating with every hour. He just wanted to find a place where he was alone and could think. But he knew it would be a long time before that would happen.

Jack waited until Gwen had left the Hub before he went to Tosh. “I need you to do something for me, Tosh.”

“Alright.” She looked at him with furrowed brows.

“I have given Gwen two days of downtime. But … I need to know she doesn’t do anything stupid.” Jack took a deep breath. He hated to do this, but there was no way he could just trust her. “Please monitor her communications. And those of Rhys Williams.”

“I…” Tosh hesitated. “Okay, sure. How are you feeling?”

Jack shrugged and put on a fake smile. “We saved the world, so it’s a pretty good day around here, isn’t it?”

Tosh sighed. “You do remember we are your friends, too, not just your employees, right?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I have learned to live with the inability to stay dead. To learn to be a Sentinel will be nothing compared to that, don’t you think?”

“I’m here if you need anything.”

Jack patted her shoulder. “Thank you, Tosh. I … I won’t forget.”

She smiled. “I’ll remind you if you do.”

He nodded and left her to her work. He found Owen in the autopsy-bay, with Beth on his table. Jack leaned on the railing and looked down at the body. He had agreed to the plan to freeze her before he had died on the way back, but that was one more thing he could not understand anymore. Freezing her had not stopped the technology in her the last time, so why would they think it would work now? It should not have been Beth’s decision to choose her death but his.

“Do you want something other than watch me work?” Owen asked.

Jack sighed. “I’ll meet someone later who will be able to help me train my senses. Ianto is making contact at the moment.”

“I should examine you.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Are you qualified to examine a Sentinel?”

“And what does that mean?” Owen spat out.

“That you have taken care of a Guide for nearly eighteen months and did not recognize him as a Guide.”

“He should have told us!” Owen insisted.

Jack shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to have been told, you should have seen it in his medical file. I saw it when I looked at the file. So, I have to question how much you know about Sentinels and Guides. - I’ll wait to be examined until we have someone with us who could help me with my senses.”

“Right.”

“To get me training is just the first step.” Jack looked down. “We need to plan a few experiments about how I’ll reacting to coming back in the future. It won’t do anyone any good if I come back in the field like the first time today.”

“Oh, and for something like that I’m good enough?”

“You are good for a lot of things, Owen. I just don’t want to repeat the experience from earlier, before I haven’t learned a little more about my new circumstances. And really, when did you treat a Sentinel or Guide the last time?”

Owen huffed. “During medical school. You are right, I haven’t cared to learn a lot about them. It seems I have to change that.”

“Not the only thing that will change.” Jack regarded the body with a wary look. He was itching to get it out of his Hub but knew that it would take a while until they could get rid of it. “When you are finished with her, I would like you to prepare a list of parameters to test my reactions to coming back to life. Ianto tried to adjust my surroundings to my new circumstances, but he could only make it easier on the touch and sight front. We can’t know if that really helped or if it was the threat to my territory and my tribe that changed my reaction.”

“Could he tell you when you came online exactly?” Owen asked.

Jack shook his head. “Ianto said I was online when I came back the first time. Chances are it happened shortly before I died. My injuries where bad and I don’t remember much after the explosion.”

“I hope you’ll let Gwen clean the SUV, its a mess in there!”

“Gwen has two days downtime.” Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I did ask her to kill me quickly because I wasn’t strong enough to kill myself. Not because of the blood, mind you, but because it would have been much less painful and I wouldn’t have been a liability if something had happened. But she ignored me. - In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t have to revive out there.”

He resented her a little bit for ignoring his plea. And he had pleaded with her as long as he had still been able to form coherent words. His death had been inevitable and Gwen had known it. But she had not been able to give him the mercy killing he had asked for.

Owen frowned. “Why the downtime?”

“She is not … prepared to work with Sentinels and Guides. I still hope she’ll get her head together, but…” Jack shrugged.

“Bloody fantastic,” Owen muttered. “And for the other thing – are you actually suggesting that we kill you repeatedly for some experiment?”

“Not the first time that I would be subject of experiments for the sake of science. Although, it will be the first time I’m consenting to it.” Jack blew out a breath and ignored the horror on Owen’s face. “It’s necessary to determine if I’m a liability in the field or not.”

“You suck, Harkness! - I’m not sure Ianto should be part of those experiments.”

Jack raised his brows. “And why is that?”

“You dying nearly knocked him out, too. - I didn’t believe him about being a Guide until you actually died from a drug that shouldn’t have been lethal and his reaction to it. … I’m sorry I killed you, I guess.”

“No hard feelings. It did lead to me finding my bearings, so…” Jack shrugged. “It’s hard for any Guide to feel a Sentinel die, and vice versa. But Ianto probably needs to learn to handle it. - It’s something Ianto has to decide for himself, though.”

On the one hand, he would like to shield Ianto from this experience, but Jack could just imagine how it would go if he tried to order Ianto to stay away. On the other hand, to learn to handle such a situation would be paramount for them to be able to go into the field together.

This was just another problem they would need to find a solution for. The damn list kept growing.

~*~*~*~*~

Ianto felt like he had gotten barely any sleep at all, even so, he had actually had ten whole hours of downtime after he had reintroduced Jack to Brac and Tirion Kendrick, who were unofficially the leaders of the Sentinel and Guide community of Cardiff.

There was no official structure or organization in the Sentinel and Guide population, but they tended to seek each other out if they lived in the same territory. And there tended to form a natural hierarchy in each of their groups. Those who were leading the local communities were often elder bonded pairs and they took care of organizing get-togethers, training and support for individual persons or whole groups, and communication with the authorities if it was needed. Their communities were tight-knit but open to newcomers and the families of their members.

Ianto had known the Kendricks since he had been a teenager and come online as a Guide at the death bed of his mother. They had been a great support for him and his sister after their father had been unable to handle the slow and painful death of his wife in any way that left him being able to care for his children.

When Ianto had come back to Cardiff he had given them a quick call, but otherwise, he had kept his distance. He could never have kept the secret of Lisa from other Guides and later on, he had been too ashamed of his actions to face them. He had to endure a long lecture from Tirion when he had shown up on their doorstep. She had not let him explain why he had finally visited them until he had promised to visit weekly in the future. He already knew the next few visits would entail a lot of meditating and counselling to get him emotionally and emphatically back on an even keel.

Brac and Tirion had invited Jack but sent Ianto away after he had taken care of a short introduction. Ianto did not know why they had even asked that of him as they already knew Jack, but he had been too tired to question it. Jack had sent him home with the instruction to get a full night of sleep and after a short phone call to Tosh, Ianto had indeed gone home.

He found Tosh in the technical lab working on the severed arm of Beth as he arrived in the Hub the next morning. Ianto grimaced. “I should have eaten before coming here!”

Tosh laughed. “And that’s a lesson you should have learned months ago, too!”

Ianto sighed. “Don’t I know it. - Anything new?”

“Not much.” Tosh frowned. “I have only just started with the arm. But … Owen suspects that Beth wasn’t as fake a personality as we thought.”

“How so?”

“The arm was the only thing in the body that wasn’t entirely human. Owen is still running a few tests, including a DNA-analysis, but he suspects that whoever they are, they took actual humans, implanted their technology and send them back on their way.”

Ianto paled and had to fight against another sort of nausea. “Like the Cyberman?”

Tosh shrugged. “Similar, but not the same. The Cyberman wouldn’t go for total annihilation right away. They need humans to convert them into their soldiers and kill only those that can’t be converted, right?” She looked up and her eyes widened in shock as they met Ianto’s. “Oh God, I’m so sorry! That was so insensitive!”

Ianto forced himself to smile. “It’s all right. I … I have to live with it. It wouldn’t help to pretend it never happened.” He sighed. “Jack helped me a lot with it, you know. He made me talk about it a lot.”

Tosh raised an eyebrow. “So, you two actually do something other than shag?”

“Yes!” Ianto rolled his eyes exaggerated. “Back to the topic at hand … yeah, just forget I said that!” He sighed about Tosh’s snickering. “If they kidnap actual people to program them into their agents they don’t need to bother to create a background for them. And that means it’s harder for us to find them.”

Tosh sobered immediately. “Impossible to find them. Expect if I find a way to detect their technology.” She regarded the arm with a frown. “But I’m not sure if I have the right knowledge for it.”

“Just do your best.” Ianto patted her shoulder “And maybe this is the right opportunity to remind Jack that we need more people. For example someone with experience in engineering.”

Tosh sighed. “Especially with the whole situation with Gwen.”

“What situation?” Ianto looked frowning to her workstation. “She is late again?”

“Not late. Jack gave her two days of downtime, read suspension.”

“What happened?” Ianto asked surprised. There had been a lot of situation in the past where Gwen should have gotten a suspension and that Jack had let slide. On the other hand, in the past, Jack had not been a Sentinel and there would be a lot of things he would not be able to tolerate now which had not bothered him so far.

Tosh shrugged. “I’m not sure. She waited for him in his office after you left. It ended with her getting two free days and Jack asking me to monitor her and her fiancé’s communication.”

Ianto ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s not good.” He blew out a breath. “But not surprising. She was … appalled and somewhat disgusted when I told her and Owen that I had felt Jack come online.”

“I should have asked Jack for what exactly I should look out!” She removed her gloves cursing and went to her computer. “Anti-Sentinel or Anti-Guide rhetoric, what do you think?”

“Both, just to be thorough,” Ianto answered warily.

Tosh huffed while she started typing. “When is Jack coming in?”

“Barring any emergencies he’ll bring our lunch. At the moment he should get his first lessons in what not to do so that he won’t lose control of his senses. Jack won’t be ready to go into the field for weeks.”

“Another reason to recruit a few new people!” Tosh muttered.

Ianto nodded. “The first candidates will probably be other Sentinels and Guides. Which means we’ll need to make a few changes to the Hub. If you got an idea where we could build a few isolation rooms, that would be great.”

Tosh looked at him with furrowed brows. “You had no problem with working here until now.”

Ianto shrugged. “But I’m a Guide, not a Sentinel. And I had my abilities locked down tight for most of the last eighteen month. The Millennium Centre has isolation rooms and the four or five times I did need the psionic buffering, I went there. That’s not a solution for a Sentinel or even if there are more Guides around than just me.”

“What does that mean, that your abilities were locked down?” Tosh sounded and felt worried.

“It’s something a Guide can do in potentially traumatic situations, to protect themselves from the empathic impact,” Ianto explained. “If I had subjected myself to all the ambient emotions of Canary Wharf I would have crawled into some hole and died right there. I nearly did exactly that after I felt the anguish of the first people being converted. They didn’t die right away, you know? They lived inside these monsters for a while, trapped in their own bodies.” Ianto shuddered and did not protest when Tosh wrapped her arms around him.

“Is that the reason why you brought Lisa here because you could still feel her being alive?”

Ianto shook his head. “Not exactly. I had it all completely shut down for a long time after … I didn’t want to feel her hurt and her desperation. But these first few minutes of the invasion were the reason I still had hope she could be saved. - It took a long time before I was able to open myself again to my empathy. As a Guide I’m still not where I was before Canary Wharf.”

“Do you need any help?” Tosh asked softly.

“Thank you.” Ianto pressed a kiss against her forehead before he stepped out of her hug. “Tirion, that’s the Guide of the pair who I sent Jack to, has already scheduled mediation and counselling for me. This is something for which I need another Guide’s help.”

“But if you need anything…”

“I’ll come to you,” Ianto promised. “Let’s get back to work, okay? - Did Gwen finish the cover story for Beth’ disappearance?”

Tosh shrugged. “I’m not sure. But I wouldn’t count on it.”

Ianto sighed. “That’s my first task for today, then.”

~*~*~*~*~

It was a quiet morning and Ianto was thankful for it. With how much they needed to organize, they could use every hour of rest the rift would give them.

To create the cover for the last day was handled in less than an hour. Mike had died on the operation table and so Ianto changed the records of the burglary to show that he and Beth had sustained grave injuries during the fight with the burglars which had led to both of them dying in the hospital.

Afterwards, he immersed himself into the plans of the Hub. Isolation rooms were just the first thing on a very long list of improvements they needed to make. And because Ianto believed that they should make good use out of it if they put the Hub under construction anyway, the list kept growing and growing.

When Jack eventually came to the Hub with a late lunch for them all he looked much more relaxed than on the evening before. All four of them shared lunch in the board room, and afterwards, Owen detailed what Ianto had already learned in the morning from Tosh. Every test the doctor had run during the morning seemed to confirm his first suspicion.

While Owen and Tosh went back to their tasks after lunch, Ianto followed Jack into his office. “I assume Brac and Tirion could help you?”

Jack nodded and let himself fall into his chair. “Yes, and with more than just my senses. Although, I’m not looking forward to the schedule they have put together for me.”

“You’ll need the training,” Ianto reminded, sitting down on the edge of the desk beside Jack. He was searching for the physical proximity because he was feeling as if Jack was distancing himself and Ianto had no idea why.

“I know. But they barely left time for work!”

Ianto grinned. “I’m sure they left the normal working hours free for you.”

“And since when could we ever keep normal working hours?” Jack asked condescendingly.

“Never.” Ianto shrugged smirking. “But you’ll be no help in the field as long as you haven’t learned to use your senses. - It’s a good time to get on with hiring more people. That was the plan before Suzie died, wasn’t it? I never quite understood why you stopped all those plans.”

Jack averted his gaze. “I’m not immune to … the toll this job is taking on all of us. After first losing Sebastian and then Suzie … I just needed a break and to determine where I went wrong with them. But instead of that, I just made all the same mistakes again with Gwen!”

“You made mistakes with Gwen,” Ianto acknowledged. “But neither Sebastian nor Suzie were your fault. Sebastian was an entitled little prick who got handed everything to him by his parents, including his job here. And Suzie … what we need to learn from her death is that we need a way to get every one of us a mental evaluation on a somewhat regular schedule.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ll lose Gwen, and it has nothing to do with my mistakes with her.” Jack sighed. “After the things I have heard yesterday from her, I’ll never be able to send her out with you or another Guide.”

“Are you sure it’s not just a problem with me?” Ianto asked sceptically. She had resented him for a long time and questioned his continued presence after Lisa more than once.

Jack shook his head. “No, it’s definitely Guides in general. - Brac recommended a bonded pair to me. They are ex-military as of half a year ago and didn’t want to join the police. It will be a start.”

“Tosh needs someone to help her with the tech, she can’t handle it all on her own. And we’ll need a doctor who knows how to handle the care of Sentinels and Guides. Someone, who maybe doesn’t act as a field agent at all! It’s hard on Owen to act as both.”

“Make a list with possible recruits,” Jack requested. “Ask Owen and Tosh for recommendations. The Kendricks offered to help with the vetting. That will make the process easier and much less time-consuming.”

Ianto frowned. “I’m surprised by how trusting you are of them.”

“I was sent out as a soldier in a lot of conflicts in the last century and that is where a lot of Sentinels and Guides come online. They were the only ones I could ever fully trust with my immortality. And for Brac … he saved me from a very bad place a long time ago and we kept in contact since then. The only reason I haven’t spoken to him in more than eight years was Yvonne Hartmann.”

“I still don’t get why they insisted on me reintroducing you!” Ianto shook his head.

“They wanted to see us interact, but they didn’t explain why.” Jack shrugged.

Ianto regarded him thoughtfully. “How are you feeling aside from your senses?”

“I’m angry.” Jack swallowed. “Furious, really. But it won’t change my situation. It’s just not easy to get over it.”

“What are you angry about?” Ianto prodded.

“I shouldn’t have come online!” Jack said with a hard voice. “An immortal Sentinel? That’s just utter bullshit! And if the potential was there all along, why couldn’t it have happened when I could have really used it? I can’t … I can’t stop to think that I could have saved Grey if I had been online at the time!”

“Grey?”

Jack took a shuddering breath. “My younger brother. He … When I was fifteen, our home was invaded and Grey … I lost him. We never found his body, so we had to assume he was taken by the enemy and that’s … Death would have been a kinder fate.”

“Did Hart speak about your brother when he vanished into the rift?”, Ianto asked appalled.

“I think so.”

“If he ever decides to show up here again, I’ll shoot him!” Ianto promised darkly. “In the head!”

Jack grinned. “I won’t stop you.”

“Do you think he told the truth?”

Jack shook his head. “No. I can’t … I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to imagine the life he had to endure if he survived that day.”

Ianto took Jacks hand in his. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He could understand why Jack was wondering about not coming online after he had just been reminded of it. But no one was able to tell what exactly triggered the awakening of a Sentinel or Guide. There were a lot of theories of course and any one of them could give them some kind of answer to Jack’s question, but Ianto knew that nothing of it would be of any help to Jack. Even with a definite answer, it would not stop the hurt.

Jack interlocked his fingers with Ianto’s. “It’s futile to think about it, I know.”

“But that doesn’t make your grief in any way invalid,” Ianto muttered. “You are…” He stopped surprised when he felt a deep warmth build in the hand that was holding Jack’s.

“What…?” Jack stared at their hands and Ianto could feel his confusion more clearly than ever before.

Ianto took a steadying breath. “That’s … the first sign of a bond starting to form.”

He flinched hard when Jack withdrew his hand as if he had been burned and even sprang out of his chair to flee to the other end of the room. More clearly could a rejection not have been. Ianto closed his eyes and let his chin fall to his chest. It felt like his heart had been ripped right out of him.

“I can’t bond!” Jack was nearly shouting, his voice full a panic.

Ianto swallowed hard. “I understand.” He wrapped his arms around himself. “I really shouldn’t have expected anything else, right?”

“This has nothing to do with you!” Jack ground out. “Or with trust. I do trust you! - But I’ll never be able to allow myself to be bonded to any Guide!”

Ianto turned to him frowning. “What?”

“I’m immortal, Ianto! How do you think that would work?” Jack scoffed. “What would happen to a bond when I die and come back? Or let’s say I actually manage not to die in the – say, next century and you manage the same? For that to work, we would have to stop working for Torchwood of course, but that’s another story altogether. So let’s just say you manage to die of old age, and I really hope you do, okay? But eventually, you’ll die. Everyone dies in the end, expect of me. So, you’ll die and I’ll still be here with a broken bond for all eternity.”

Jack paused and crossed his arms in a protective gesture. “I have seen Sentinels lose their bonded Guide and go crazy over it. I have witnessed how they needed to be put down themselves, so they wouldn’t be a threat to everyone around them. How do you think that would work for me when I just come back every time I’m killed?”

Ianto sighed. All the anger about the rejection that had been growing in him died instantly in the face of Jacks utter desperation, but it could not lessen the hurt in any way. He knew Jack’s concerns were valid if a little bit outdated. “The last Sentinel that was killed after losing his Guide because his fellow soldiers couldn't get him under control was in World War II. We have learned a lot since then to help Sentinels and Guides in such a situation.”

“But they still never get over the broken bond completely, right?” Jack shook his head. “It’s just not an option.”

“We are drawn to bond. Our kind, I mean. You’ll be drawn to other Guides in the future, that will never stop.” Ianto worried his lip. “Maybe you’ll have another reaction to a broken bond to accommodate for your immortality. Nature provides, that’s been true for Sentinels and Guides for many thousands of years.”

Jack scoffed. “Not for me, because I shouldn’t even exist. I have been reliably informed that I’m a mistake, that my whole existence is wrong.”

Ianto flinched and swallowed down his anger. Whoever had said such a hateful thing to Jack should better hope to never cross his path. “And did the person who said that to you even know how your immortality was created?”

“As he was there when it happened…” Jack shrugged. “Anyway – I thought sex was needed to form a bond.”

Ianto frowned, but even without feeling Jack’s reluctance or the blatant change of topic, it would have been clear by just looking at Jack that he was not willing to talk about it any further. “Not required but it often does help, especially for pairs that don’t know each other very well.”

“What is required for a bond then?” Jack asked.

“Intimacy and a certain knowledge of the other person. The Guide needs to form an emotional impression of the Sentinel and the Sentinel needs to form an imprint of the Guide with all their senses.” Ianto sighed. “Sex can create that. But so can battles fought together or intimate relationships formed before one or both of the pair came online. And it is speculated that there needs to be a certain compatibility between the abilities of the Sentinel and Guide, although it’s not clear how that could be measured. But there are cases of pairs who couldn’t form a bond, even so, they were both emotionally invested in each other.”

“Fuck!” Jack leaned against the wall and let himself slide to the floor, burying his face in his hands. “That’s the thing I’m really furious about, you know? The whole fucked up year I was gone I kept myself sane with the thought of eventually coming back to you. Specifically you, Ianto! And now this bullshit is making it impossible to…”

Ianto felt gutted by this revelation. He stared at Jack, wishing he could do anything to help, but there was nothing to be done. There was no way they could continue to build on the relationship they had started to form in the last few weeks if Jack was so adamantly against a bond. And as much as it hurt, Ianto could understand Jack’s reluctance about it. Ianto himself would be willing to risk it, but then he was not the one damned to eternal life.

The silence was broken when Tosh stormed into the office without knocking. “Jack, you need…” She hesitated, looking from Ianto to Jack and back, clearly startled. “I’m … sorry to interrupt, but you need to see this! Both of you.”

When Jack did not react, Ianto said, “We’ll be with you in a moment.”

Tosh nodded. “I’m really sorry!” she repeated quietly before she left again.

“That no one here knows how to knock!” Jack growled.

“I’m pretty sure, that is something Tosh learned from you.” That only earned Ianto a dark look from Jack and he sighed. “I’m sorry, Jack. I wish there was something I could do to help you. Or to take this burden from you. I … enjoyed the last weeks with you very much.”

“Is there anything that could stop the bond from forming?” Jack asked.

Ianto shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

Jack rubbed his hands over his face. “Right, it just wouldn’t do for me to get what I really want only one time, would it?” His voice was full of self-loathing and Ianto had to stomp down hard on the urge to hug him while Jack stood up. “Let’s see what Tosh needs to show us so urgently.”

Ianto carefully kept his distance as he followed Jack to Tosh, who looked and felt ready to explode. Owen stood beside her with crossed arms and a pinched face. Ianto suddenly was not sure anymore if he really wanted to know what Tosh had found out.

“You should have really told me yesterday what exactly I was monitoring Gwen for, Jack!” Tosh said before they had even reached her. “I would have found this sooner!”

Jack crossed his arms. “I had hoped you would find nothing.”

Tosh sighed deeply. “To tell the truth we should have found this in her background check. The damn police should have found it in her background check before hiring her.”

“What are you talking about and why wasn’t it found in either background check?” Ianto asked.

She pointed to her monitor, where a marriage certificate was opened, alongside an audio file. “Because no one thought to follow up with the second marriage of her grandmother that let her widowed before Gwen was even born.”

“The grandmother whose husband came back from the war as a Sentinel?” Jack asked worriedly.

Tosh nodded. “Yes, that one. The marriage ended in 1950 and she remarried eight years later, a man called Justin Corry.”

Ianto dropped down on the next chair in shock and Jack cursed loudly, only Owen was looking at her confused. “I think I missed something.”

“Justin Corry is responsible for the attack on the festivities to the twenty-year anniversary of the end of World War II here in Cardiff,” Tosh explained. “The explosion he caused killed 37 people, barely any Sentinels and Guides among them, even though he had tried to target them specifically. He was killed two days later when he resisted his arrest. His sons tried to sue the police for his death without success and consequently founded _Rhyddid i'n Lluoedd,_ which means _Freedom for our Forces_. This group demands that Sentinels and Guides are banned from military service and the police, stating that those that were already there were forcing others to come online. They would like to detain every single Sentinel and Guide in specially prepared villages to separate them from the rest of the population.”

“And that is Gwen’s step-grandfather and uncles?” Owen asked incredulously.

Tosh shrugged. “There is no evidence of any contact between Gwen’s family and Corry’s sons after his death. His widow never made an appearance outside of the interview taken by the police in ‘65 and it all happened ten years before Gwen was even born. But yesterday evening Gwen used her fiancé's cellphone to call Robert Corry, Justin’s youngest son and the man who is suspected to lead the _Rhyddid i'n Lluoedd_ nowadays.”

Ianto frowned. “Suspected?”

“They are very secretive,” Tosh answered. “The group is suspected to be responsible for several attacks on Sentinels and Guides and organizations associated with them, but there could never be found any concrete proof. Outwardly they are only organizing protest, petitions and the like.”

“Gwen said yesterday that it would just seem like I had come online and that Ianto would be responsible for the deceit.”

Ianto scoffed. “That is exactly their rhetoric.”

“There is an open warrant for Robert Corry, but supposedly no one knows where he is. He has a daughter, but she insists to have had no contact with him for more than a decade.” Tosh scoffed. “So, yesterday Gwen makes this call to a man she calls Uncle Robert, told him about two unexpected free days and asks if she can visit him to get out of town for a while. The number she called is registered to Robert Corry’s daughter. After I knew where to look it was nothing to find the connection.”

“That doesn’t sound as if there was no contact between them,” Owen said.

“No evidence of such contact and no contact are two different things!” Tosh scolded.

“Where is Gwen now?” Jack asked.

Tosh shrugged. “No idea. As I didn’t know what I was looking for, my program wasn’t set up to inform me about her plan to leave, it was just recording and I would have only been notified if she started to talk about Torchwood or aliens. She was picked up by a car in the morning, but she has left her phone at home. I tracked the car through CCTV, but I lost them when they left the city.”

Ianto furrowed his brows. “Can you trace the phone she called?”

Tosh shook her head. “Already tried that, but they seem to be prepared. I keep monitoring Rhys in case she contacts him.”

“Just wait a moment.” Owen held up his hands. “What are we talking about here? Do any of you really think Gwen is some kind of spy for this organization?”

Jack shrugged. “The best case would probably be if she actually had only minimal contact with her step-family until yesterday and only reached out because she lost her shit about me coming online. Or Ianto being a Guide. Her grandmother wouldn’t have needed to be involved with this group to teach her children and grandchildren the same ideas.”

Tosh continued, “And the worst case would be, she did have regular contact with them throughout her life and the _Rhyddid i'n Lluoedd_ planned all along to put her into a place in the police. Then she would have been groomed for this role from a very young age and we have no idea who she really is. Her mother has two siblings, right? Maybe we should look into their children.”

“She isn’t exactly subtle or unassuming, as one would expect from a spy,” Owen protested. “And then, why come here instead of staying in the police?”

“That’s the problem with trying to groom children you don’t have in your control 24/7, you can’t know how they turn out.” Jack frowned. “And who knows what she thought she could gain by working for us.”

Ianto snorted. “I know exactly what she wanted to gain by following your invitation. And yesterday she lost her shit because she had to know that she lost any chance to get it.”

Owen rolled his eyes. “Not everyone wants to shag their boss.”

Ianto looked at Owen but waved his hand at Jack. “Oh come on, we all know she would crawl all over Jack if he would just let her.” He grinned when Owen grimaced and Jack snorted. “And in the minds of those people, to want a Sentinel or Guide is probably the most heinous thing ever. So, because Gwen hasn’t gotten yet what she thinks is her due, Jack just can’t be a Sentinel!”

Jack laughed. “I feel so objectified!”

“You are owning it and using it most of the time!” Ianto stated unaffected. “But you misjudged Gwen’s reaction, who never seemed to get that you were flirting with everyone to the same extent, and who thought you flirting with her actually meant something.”

“But what do we do with Gwen?”, Tosh asked.

Jack looked at some point at the other end of the room, his face grim. “To go to such an organization just hours after a co-worker came online is reason enough for a termination of her contract. So, Retcon or execution, but both are probably problematic with her already involving outsiders.”

“We let the police handle it,” Ianto suggested. “At least at first.”

“What?” All three of his co-workers looked at him surprised and appalled.

Ianto shrugged. “They missed this, too. They’ll want to know it and Gwen is probably meeting with a wanted person. - I think she’ll come back without suspecting anything. The police can take her in for questioning and can determine how much she is involved in this group. As they know that she works for us, she’ll be questioned by officers in the know, and thus can’t use any information against us or to be let go. The _Rhyddid i'n Lluoedd_ is not in our mandate. We shouldn’t do anything other than call the police.”

“And after the investigation is closed?” Jack asked.

“That depends on what happens to her. If Tosh’s scenario is the right one, she’ll probably go to jail. If not, we can still give her Retcon or organize an accident.”

~*~*~*~*~

Gwen came back to Cardiff in the morning of the day she should have come back to work. The police picked her up on her way to the Hub while Tosh tried to track the car and driver who had brought Gwen back. Jack heard all of that from Brac and Tirion, in whose House he had spent the third night in a row. The police had called them as soon as they had Gwen is custody.

Jack was not quite sure why the police were asking the Kendricks to witness the interrogations of Gwen and even Rhys Williams, but he had gotten the impression that the investigation into this organization was much more serious than the police let on. Jack had gone to the station with Brac and Tirion and had listened in to the interview of Rhys before he had left for the Hub.

Gwen was staying silent, and Jack was sure he would be more of a hindrance than a help should he try to speak with her. He had heard enough from Rhys to know that a police holding cell was the right place for Gwen. He was frustrated by the whole situation, especially as he had not even been aware that anti-Guide-and-Sentinel-organizations were such a problem. He had never even thought about them in the past.

When Jack came into he Hub he could see Tosh sitting on her computer and hear Owen curse in the med-bay. Ianto was nowhere to be seen and Jack was somewhat relieved about it.

The last two days had been awkward, full of aborted gestures and heavy silence. The nascent bond was like a wall between them, threateningly flaring up whenever they touched skin to skin. Jack had not known how often he casually touched Ianto until he had to remind himself repeatedly not to do it. And then there was this yearning for the younger man, that had already developed on the Valiant and had become so much stronger since he had come online.

Jack had no idea how he could maintain his distance to Ianto in the future and so far had found no time to think about it.

Despite his relief, he could not stop his senses from searching for Ianto until he could detect his heartbeat in his office. He needed to know where every member of his team was at any given time. In the last days, he had even continually searched for Gwen, despite knowing she was not there. The void that had left in him had diminished when he had learned that she was in police custody and entirely vanished after he had heard Rhys’ interview. He would need to talk to someone about this, but that had time until the evening.

Jack hesitated a moment in front of the door to his office because he knew Ianto was waiting inside, and took a breath to steady himself. Which was a mistake as all it did was let him inhale Ianto’s scent, accelerating his longing for the other man.

Ianto was sitting in the chair in front of the desk and looked up from the stack of files in his lap as Jack came into the office. “Hey, you are late.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Jack sat down in his chair, blowing out a breath. “I went to the station after I learned that Gwen was in custody.”

“What did she say?” Ianto asked.

Jack shook his head. “Nothing. And I didn’t try to talk to her. I’m not even sure why I went there, but I had enough after I heard what Rhys had to say.”

Ianto raised his brows. “Is he involved?”

“No, probably not. He didn’t even know Gwen wasn’t at work.” Jack furrowed his brows. “The officer asked him if he knew anything about an uncle of Gwen called Robert. Apparently, Gwen has fond childhood memories of this man, who is not really an uncle but someone she has called by this title her whole life. Allegedly he does some kind of work for the betterment of society and was the inspiration for Gwen to go to the police.”

“Great.” Ianto sighed and his shoulders sagged down. “So, Tosh’s worst-case scenario just got much more likely. This will cause a lot of unrest in the police.”

“It already has,” Jack confirmed. “Everyone in the station seemed to be … angry and determined to root out the problem. - You were right letting them handle this. I didn’t even know such organizations were such a big problem.”

Ianto shrugged. “Not many people outside of our communities are even aware of them. On the whole, there are still very few of us and many mundanes aren’t very concerned with us.”

It should have concerned him, and not only because there had been a time, decades ago, when most of the people he would have called his friends had been Sentinels and Guides. Jack felt he should have known about such a threat to them. But then, he had never cared much for politics because all he had done was bid his time until he could reconnect with the Doctor. Much good that had done him!

“This will change very soon, you know?” Jack frowned. “The number of Sentinels and Guides all over the world will rise significantly in the next couple of years. I don’t remember when exactly, but it was the first quarter of this century.”

Ianto sat up, straightening his back. “Do you know why?”

Jack shook his head. “I never bothered to learn. It was three thousand years in the past when I went to school. So even if I had learned of the reason there, we wouldn’t be able to trust it fully. And the Timeagency had banned this whole century for travel, so I never bothered to look up their information on it.”

“What would cause such a ban?” Ianto asked.

“A lot of things. Most likely a fixed point, or more likely even a series of fixed points.”

“Whatever a fixed point is,” Ianto muttered. “Someday you’ll have to explain to me what this whole business with the Timeagancy is.”

Jack grinned. “Maybe.”

Ianto huffed. “Which means no, I take it. - But that’s not why I was waiting for you anyway. I have completed the list on positions we need to fill and for each a list of potential candidates. That bonded pair that the Kendricks recommended, when will they be able to start?”

“Day after tomorrow. I talked with them briefly on the phone yesterday. They have cut their travels short and are coming back to Cardiff tomorrow. They’ll wait up at the water tower at nine in two days.”

Ianto nodded. “That’s good. We were lucky so far with the rift, but we need more hands around here. The sooner the better. And that gives us nearly three weeks to get them used to all the crazy around here before we have to wake up Tommy.”

Jack smirked. “Just enough time so they hopefully won’t freak out completely by it!”

Ianto snorted. “Yeah, not really. I still freak out about it. - Tosh and Owen provided a list of potential candidates, but I was really surprised by the list you sent me for the maintenance and support positions. A whole family out of London, without any experience with aliens?”

Jack shrugged. It had been a spur of the moment decision after a late-night call with Trish. He missed Martha’s family more than he had expected, they had grown on him over the year on the Valiant. And as far as he knew, they had massive problems with going back to a normal life.

“But then I saw their pictures and remembered that I have seen them on the footage of the Valiant.”

Jack looked up sharply. “What do you know about that?”

“Not nearly as much as I would like to know.” Ianto hesitated. “When we came back from this fool's errand in the Himalayas the first thing I did, was to check UNIT’s database for any information about Harold Saxon. It was highly suspicious that he had sent us away while attempting to make contact to some alien race and at the same time declaring you alongside the Doctor and an unknown woman terrorists. Of course, it was all over when we came back, with the American President and our Prime Minister dead, but I still wanted to know what happened.”

Ianto looked down. “I found the footage that Saxon had broadcasted and that had vanished from every other possible source. It just brought up more questions. It’s obvious that something is missing between the moment the President died and the following minutes. If there are any reports of what really happened on the Valiant, I haven’t found them.”

“They are kept on a separate machine that isn’t connected to any network.” Jack closed the eyes. This footage should be there, too. He would have to make a call later to rectify this situation. “You don’t need to know what happened on the Valiant. It’s just … It’s a nightmare. And in the end … it didn’t even really happen. The discrepancy you saw in the footage, that was time being set back.”

“It happened to you.” Ianto’s voice was quiet and full of sorrow. “You said it was a year and you looked … you were a prisoner on this ship, weren’t you?”

“I can’t…” Jack took a ragged breath. “I don’t want to talk about this. And you don’t need to be laden down with such a knowledge.”

Ianto sighed. “The things I have seen from you since you came back … the little you have said and the things I have picked up emphatically … I know you were tortured. To know the details won’t make this knowledge any more devastating for me than it already is. And as much as you seem to want to just forget it, that’s not how these things work. You need help, Jack, you need to talk about this.”

“I really don’t!” Jack bit out.

He did not need to rehash any of it. It was over and done with and he had gotten over similar situations on his own in the past. There was no need to put his own nightmares in the heads of others and especially not that of Ianto.

“If not me, then maybe Tirion,” Ianto suggested undeterred. “Or another Guide. There are those who specialize in treating any kind of trauma. - And if you bring the Joneses here, do you really think you’ll be able to keep what happened a secret from the team? I gather they would benefit from a little bit of psychological help as well, if they remember it, too.”

“They do. Everyone who was on the Valiant remembers.” Jack shook his head. “I don’t even know why I want them here. I was fine with calling them every other day until … until I came online.”

“They were prisoners with you?” Ianto asked.

Jack nodded.

“Sentinels and Guides tend to form tight familial groups around them,” Ianto explained. “Mundanes as well as other Sentinels and Guides. And it's known that soldiers who were isolated with a small group of comrades from support in any way, and who come online during this isolation or in the months afterwards, build these familial groups around those comrades.” He made a gesture that was encompassing the Hub. “We are basically in such a situation, as our work tends to isolate us from the rest of the city. On an instinctual level, you probably see us and the Joneses as … yours.”

“Will it pass?”

Ianto shook his head. “I’m not sure. No one ever tried to sit it out, as far as I know. The Joneses are probably feeling the urge to come here. It’s … this legacy that let's emerge Sentinels and Guides is in every single human, it’s part of our fundamental biology. And so are these kinds of instincts.”

Jack frowned and shook his head. “I don’t want to uproot them. They have already gone through so much. - Just forget I gave you their names.”

“You should at least ask them”, Ianto insisted. “They don’t even have to work for us if they don’t want to. Chances are high that they are already affected by this change. Don’t take their choice away from them! But I’ll leave it to you.”

Jack growled, frustrated. Everything new he learned about his situation was just one more thing that showed what a bad combination it was to be immortal and a Sentinel. There was a good reason he kept his distance from most others in the last few decades, but how could he maintain such if his newfound instincts were working against him?

How long would it take to drive a Sentinel insane if he was forced to lose everyone he held dear over and over and over again? He had found himself on some very dark edges in the last one hundred and forty years as well as before he had become immortal, sometimes even driving down in the abyss for a while. What would it mean to reach such a point as a Sentinel?

Ianto put one of the files from his lap on the desk. “This is a list for possible medical support including basic information about each person. Every name on this list was provided by Owen, but two of them I had already to strike out. He is very enthusiastic about us hiring a second doctor. I think he would have no problem if he could use his medical knowledge exclusively for autopsies and research.”

Jack took the change of topic with more gratitude than was probably warranted. “And did you tell him about your idea of mental evaluations for the team?”

Ianto snorted. “He was cursing a lot, but in the end, he wasn’t able to deny the necessity. It’s something we should search for a psychologist for who is a Guide. They would already know what we are doing.”

“Another thing we could ask Brac and Tirion about, I guess.” Jack sighed. He had not felt accountable to anyone in years, but since he had met them again three days ago he had started to feel this urge to look at them for advice. He had never gotten an answer when he asked after the hierarchy in the Sentinel and Guide communities and now he began to understand, that there was no definite answer. It was built out of instinct and there was probably no one who could influence it.

“Yes.” Ianto nodded and put the next file in front of Jack. “Tosh has explicitly asked for engineering and IT support. She may be a genius, but it’s just to much work for one person. This list is divided into those two categories.”

“Why has neither of them ask for this support earlier?” Jack wanted to know. Even as they had actively searched for new recruits, before Suzie had gone on a rampage, neither Owen nor Tosh had spoken up for what they needed.

Ianto shrugged. “You would have to ask them.” He put another file on the desk leaving only one in his lap. “And a list of possible field agents. They all have some specialities, but I think we really should have enough field agents to maintain two shifts.”

“Yes.” Jack agreed wholeheartedly and at one time that had been his goal. They had the budget for it, but before the fall of One Yvonne Hartmann had blocked any attempt on his side to have a bigger team than four people beside him. One of his biggest regrets of the last year was that he had let himself be so impacted by Suzie's betrayal that he had shied away from following through with these plans earlier.

Jack raised his brows when Ianto hesitated with the last file. “That’s support for the administrative side of things, I assume?”

Ianto sighed. “Sort of. It is a list of possible administrative staff.” He took a deep breath. “And a list for a replacement for me.”

Jack was sure he had heard that wrong. “Replacement? Why the hell would you need to be replaced?”

Ianto put the last file in front of Jack and a single cheat of paper on top of it. “This is my request for a transfer to Glasgow. Archie already gave his okay for this.”

“But I won’t!” Jack pushed the form back over the desk. “Just no! What the hell, Ianto? Why do you want a transfer all of a sudden? - We need you here much more than Archie does!”

“I would have thought that’s obvious.” Ianto looked down at his hands. “The last two days have been … We can’t work this way.”

“You want to leave because I don’t want the bond?” Jack asked flabbergasted.

Ianto sighed. “Not for the reason you think. It’s always there, I know you have noticed that. It won’t go away, it won’t … be patient forever. We unintentionally build this connection, and I don’t even know how as your trust in me on a personal level is obviously not the greatest. I talked with Tirion about this at length yesterday. The only way to hinder the bond to eventually build in full is … space. We need to not see each other every day, or even every week.” He shrugged. “With a little bit of luck, I’ll be able to come back in a couple of years.”

“No,” Jack repeated. “That’s not gonna happen! And what the hell did I do to let you doubt my trust in you?” That accusation hurt nearly as much as the whole idea of Ianto leaving.

Ianto snorted. “I know from experience how much trust it needs to talk with someone about the things that plague your mind. But that’s not the point at the moment.”

“As you leaving isn’t a point at all in our discussion, we have a lot of room for this issue.” Jack had braced his arms on his desk and fisted his hands. “I’m not talking about this fucked up year at the Valiant because I’m trying to protect you! You have no idea how relieved I was that you weren’t on the Valiant, that you wouldn’t ever remember, that you were probably long dead at the end when I eventually managed to reverse the damn paradox!”

Ianto met his gaze straight on and said quietly, “You don’t have to protect me.”

“Yes, I do!” Jack could not keep his arms from shaking. “You are wrong if you think it wouldn’t change anything for you to know what exactly happened. It would change everything! And that’s just another reason to prevent the bond! It would open up all these things in me to you, wouldn’t it? You would be subjected to all this shit inside of me and we couldn’t do anything to prevent it!”

“It would.” Ianto started to reach out for him but aborted the move with a flinch. “Believe me, it wouldn’t be any more of a burden than the pure knowledge that you were tortured for a year. But I would be able to lift part of this burden from you!”

Jack could feel the tears burning in his eyes. “I would never want you to have to feel these … things.”

Ianto nodded slowly. “You are terrified of it, that is very clear. But that doesn’t change my opinion about it.” He averted his gaze, looking down at his hands. “And even so I don’t understand this particular reason, I do understand the other reasons you gave me.”

Ianto hesitated and ran his tongue over his lips. “I don’t necessarily agree with them. I still think you wouldn’t suffer more under a broken bond than under losing any other person dear to you. And I think you would be able to find a new Guide and form a new bond after your old Guide has passed away. Because we are just not made to be alone. Sentinels and Guides have come in pairs from the very beginning of humanity.”

He looked back up to Jack who could just stare, unable to move. “And I would be willing to take the risk concerning a bond and your death. There too, I think, will be a solution that won’t leave us behind with a broken bond. - There was never before a Sentinel or a Guide who was impaired in such a way that they couldn’t bond. I strongly believe that you would not have come online if your immortality really was a hindrance to a bond.”

Jack snorted. “There is a first time for everything.” He would like to wish for these things, just so he could allow himself to give in to his longing for Ianto. But even only to wish for them would make it so much harder to stay strong and keep away.

Ianto shook his head. “Not in this. It is our imperative to protect. And we only find our full potential to do so after we bond.” He smiled, but it was eternally sad. “If there was any way to take this curse of immortality from you, I would do anything to make it possible. And if there was a way to share it with you so I wouldn’t have to leave you alone, I wouldn’t hesitate even a second to do it. If a bond with you would mean either I would gladly accept it.”

“No!” Jack said resolutely, shaking his head. “Don’t even think about such a thing!” Sometimes he had dreamed about it, to have someone to share his fate with, someone who was like him. But he would never actually want to put this on another person.

“That would be my choice, wouldn’t it?” Ianto asked. “And we are back to you taking away the choices of the people around you. - But that doesn’t matter much at the moment, as we don’t know how to accomplish either. As I said, I may not agree with your reasons, but I accept them. I accept your choice. And the only way to prevent this bond from happening is distance. I initially thought to stay another few days, long enough to welcome the new additions to the team and to help in their orientation. But now I think it is better if I leave right away.”

Ianto stood up and moved in the direction of the door, and before Jack could even think about his reaction, he had plunged out of the chair to the door, blocking it with his body. “You can’t go!”

“Jack.” Ianto sighed and stopped just out of Jacks reach. “There are only these two options. I leave Cardiff or we bond.”

“I can’t let you go!” Jack closed his eyes. “You have no idea how much the thought alone hurts. I just got you back!” Even if he wanted to, he just knew he would not be able to move out of the way. And he was not so sure any more if he really wanted to let Ianto go in any way.

“I’m not opposed to a bond. In fact, I would love to bond with you.” Ianto’ voice was steady and soothing. “I missed you, too, while you were gone. I hadn’t even noticed how much I was … how invested I had become in you until you were first dead for such a damn long time and then just gone.” He paused for a long moment. “It’s your choice. Do you want to bond with me or not?”

Jack opened his eyes and looked at Ianto. “A bond would be such a bad idea!”

Ianto’s sad smile came back. “That is a conviction you are desperately holding onto out of fear. It was probably the first thought you had after you had accepted that you had come online, right? - I understand your fear. But I trust into this biological imperative that has driven our kind for thousands of years and has as far as we know never gone wrong. I have to trust it because I can’t stand the thought that you’ll be damned to an eternal life with this longing for a Guide.”

Ianto wet is lips. “I want to bond with you. I want to stay here and take great care in living a life as long as possible, only so I can stay at your side for a long time. I want you, Jack. But that’s me, probably being fairly selfish. - I’m prepared to let all of that go if that is what _you_ want.”

“What I really want hasn’t mattered in a long time,” Jack whispered. He was barely holding himself back from reaching out.

“It matters now,” Ianto replied quietly. “It’s the only thing that matters right now.”

Jack took half a step forward and raised a hand, but he stopped with his hand hovering just an inch away from Ianto’s cheek. “Are you sure? There is no going back if we … Are you really sure you want me, with all the ballast I’m carrying with me?”

“Yes,” Ianto replied smiling.

Jack took a shuddering breath as he placed his hand against Ianto’s cheek, and the warm spark that he had tried to avoid in the last two days rose up immediately. There was no going back now. He would not have the strength to step away again as he had not had the strength to step aside and let Ianto go.

He still thought that all of this could and would eventually drive him crazy, that losing Ianto would drive him crazy. But he could not care for that at the moment. All he cared about was to take the man he wanted and not let him go for as long as possible.

They had shared a lot of kisses in the past, but none had been as careful and as savouring, as this one was. Ianto curled his fingers in the front of Jack’s shirt and shifted his weight just slightly to lean into him.

In the last three days Jack had taken in all the new nuances he could detect in Ianto’s scent, in the tone of his voice and the other noises his body made, and in everything, he could have seen of Ianto’s body. It was a never growing catalogue of things he wanted to savour forever if possible and now he could expand it still with the taste of Ianto’s lips against his and the feeling of Ianto’s skin under his fingers.

Jack laid his free hand over Iantos’s hands, curling his fingers carefully around the fists. He could feel something shift between them, something that had been there for days, curling around them and pushing them together. It was nothing he had any comparison for and Jack had thought it would be disconcerting to let it happen. But instead, he was welcoming it and then with something like a snap he suddenly had an awareness of Ianto that was completely new. It was like he could feel Ianto inside his head and inside his heart, but it was not intrusive. It let him feel like he was whole for the first time in his very long life.

Jack drew back his head to look at Ianto. But before he could say anything or do anything, their surroundings changed. The ambient noise of the Hub vanished leaving them in an eerie silence, his office vanished making place for a wide, empty, endless room bathed in a warm yellow glow.

“What the hell?” Jack took a step back, not letting go of Ianto’s hand, but scanning their surrounding for any threat.

“This feels like the spirit plane,” Ianto muttered confused. “But it doesn’t look like it.”

“Spirit plane?” Jack asked warily.

“Or psionic plane. It’s … something all Guides have a connection to,” Ianto explained. “Tirion took me there a few times before I went to London, but I was never able to reach it on my own, but that’s not unusual for unbonded Guides.”

“We just bonded,” Jack stated.

Ianto grinned brightly. “Yes.”

“Is it usual for a newly bonded pair to take a trip to this spirit plane?” Jack asked, still alerted.

Ianto shrugged, warily looking around. “No idea. No one ever mentioned it. And even if it was … we should be in something of a blue jungle. Not in a yellow … nothing.”

“Don’t worry, my Sentinel. Nothing will harm you or your Guide here.”

Jack spun around and came face to face with a ghost. “Rose?”

Her eyes were glowing and her hair seemed to be blown up by a wind that wasn’t there. She smiled warmly. “I’m not Rose Tylor. But it was her actions that gave me sapiens. And an impression of her from. I am Bad Wolf.”

Jack shuddered and he felt Ianto press against his side. “I don’t understand.”

“Rose was so desperate, so full of love and hope and determination. She gave all to save her Doctor. And you. But she wouldn’t have survived. The Doctor’s interference would have come too late.”

“What are you?” Jack asked. He remembered the Doctor telling him about Rose looking into the heart of the TARDIS, right into the time vortex, and about her bringing him back to life. He had never had the opportunity to ask how the Doctor had saved her afterwards.

“I am time.” She spread her arms. “Life, death, existence. I am what lets the stars burn and lets planets rotate around them. I am everything. - But Rose gave me something. She shared something with me no one had ever shared with me before. She changed me. And now I am Bad Wolf. And I saved her from me.”

“She changed me, too. You could change me back.” Jack frowned. “You are the heart of the TARDIS, you can take away my immortality.”

She shook her head. “The heart of a TARDIS is but a small window to me. Nothing more than a tether.”

“But you can change me back!” Jack insisted.

“No.” She eyed him with a fond smile. “You were never meant not to be exactly what you are, my Sentinel. This was meant to be the course of your life from the very first breath you took.”

Jack took a step back. “No.”

“But you were never meant to be alone. It was never meant for you to walk this path alone.” Her glowing eyes turned to Ianto.

“When Jack was meant to be a Sentinel, an immortal Sentinel at that, why hasn’t he come online earlier?” Ianto asked and Jack knew without having to question it that Ianto was asking this for him, because of his doubts.

“He had to choose to be a Protector.” She cocked her head. “And he had to choose his Guide. And he did both at the same time. He waited so long for his Doctor.” She looked at Jack. “But he was wrong, my Sentinel. You never were a mistake.”

Jack wet his lips. “Choose my Guide?”

“You can’t change Jack back, but…” Ianto’s fingers tightened around Jack’s hand. “Can you make me immortal like him?”

“No!” Jack interrupted before she could answer. “That is not…”

“Of course,” she said, without taking her eyes from Jack for one moment. “It was your Guide’s choice, my Sentinel. Nothing that he has said to you were empty words. He said every single thing with the conviction of his whole heart.”

“That doesn’t mean…,” Jack began.

Ianto turned to him and interrupted him, “My choice, Jack. And you are not taking it away from me. I choose you. And I know all eternity with you will be anything but easy, but that doesn’t change my mind.”

“Ianto.” Jack took a shuddering breath.

“You have a long but great path before you,” she said. “You were meant to be, my Sentinel, because your kind needs a Protector through all of time.”

Ianto turned back to her and Jack frowned. “I don’t understand. A few thousand years from now there will be no Sentinels and Guides any more.”

“They are hidden, forgotten, dismissed, but never extinct. Sentinels and Guides are the proctors of the human race. And the protectors of every race that arises from humans.”

“But they need their own protectors, which would be us?” Ianto asked incredulously.

“Yes. Knowledge is lost for every race throughout time. You are to protect the knowledge of your kind and the position of your kind in their races. It is never to be forgotten that Sentinels and Guides are the protectors of humans and their descendants.”

“Why Jack? Why do I get to choose this but Jack didn’t get a choice at all?”

“But my Sentinel did choose. He chose Earth and he chose you.”

“Long after you had already made him immortal!”

She smiled brightly. “The day my Sentinel will become immortal is still in your very, very far future. - You are both eternal. You’ll stand as the protectors of protectors until I’ll cease to exist and you with me.”

~*~*~*~*~

It was just a blink of the eyes and they found themselves back in Jack’s office as if they had not moved at all, as if they had never been somewhere else. Ianto met Jack’s gaze, the other man’s hand still on his cheek and his own hands buried in Jack’s shirt. He could feel the same confusion and uncertainty in Jack that overcame him.

“That was…” Jack frowned. “Was that real?”

“You mean the young blond woman talking about being time and making me immortal?” Ianto asked. He could not put in words how much he hoped it had actually been real, at least the part about him being like Jack. Now that the bond started to settle between them he could not fathom the thought that someday he would have to leave Jack behind.

Jack swallowed. “So, we did see and hear the same thing. Doesn’t mean it was real.”

“Only one way to find out.”

“No!” Jack’s eyes widened. “Don’t you dare…”

“I’m not talking about killing myself,” Ianto interrupted him and rolled his eyes. “Obviously! But small injuries heal fast for you, don’t they? A small cut should suffice to see if it is the same for me.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

Ianto smiled. “I know. But I don’t want to wait and wonder about it until I suffer a major injury, do you?”

“Okay.” Jack closed his eyes. “There is a knife in my desk.”

“I know.” Ianto pressed a quick kiss against Jack’s lips before he let go of the other man and went around the desk. He did not miss the fact that Jack kept his place in front of the door as if there was still the possibility of Ianto leaving. As if there had ever been the possibility that he would actually leave.

Ianto found the folding knife where it should be and did not hesitate to cut himself in the side of his palm. Jack was beside him and taking the knife out of his hand before Ianto could even lift it from his skin, and that was exactly the reason why Ianto had not allowed himself to hesitate. If he had, Jack would have probably tried to stop him.

“This feels weird,” Ianto stated, while he watched the cut heal in a matter of seconds. He knew he was unable to mask his relief and joy even one bit.

Jack let the knife fall back into the still open drawer and took Ianto’s hand in both of his. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he brushed his thumb over the unscathed skin where the cut had been. He raised Ianto’s hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against the palm.

Ianto sighed. “One more time, Jack, and then we will never have this discussion again: This was my choice. Nothing you said or did pressure me into this.”

“I made you my Guide,” Jack muttered against his palm.

Ianto snickered. “I think, _I_ made _you_ my Sentinel. I could have just as easily gone and left you a letter with the list of my possible replacements as soon as our new additions had arrived.”

It was clearly written all over Jack’s face that he was absolutely horrified by that idea.

“And if I had in any way agreed with your arguments I would have done exactly that,” Ianto continued. “Just to spare both of us this very hurtful confrontation. But I had hoped if I confronted you with the prospect of me leaving it would change your mind. And it did.”

“You sneaky bastard.” In spite of his words, Jack was grinning as he pulled Ianto into his arms. “I still regret this change for you. And I think it will be a long time before I can stop regretting it.”

Ianto buried his face in Jack’s neck. “I’ll never be as alone as you were. I’ll never be confronted with the doubts over my own existence that you carried with you for more than a century. And whatever happens, you’ll never be alone again, too!”

“There happened a lot of bad things to me because of my immortality that had nothing to do with those things,” Jack muttered.

Ianto hummed, not sure if these things had really not influenced Jack’s situation in such a way that they had ultimately played into anything Jack had experienced. But that was a discussion that would keep for later when they had found a balance in their new relationship.

Ianto asked instead, “Do you think we can justify disappearing in your bunker for a while, so we won’t be disturbed by co-workers storming into your office because they don’t know how to knock?”

Jack laughed quietly. “I’m the boss around here, I can justify anything I want!”

He took Ianto’s hand and pulled him to the ladder, letting the Guide climb down before he followed. Ianto prodded Jack to the bed until he sat down on it and Ianto could straddle his lap. He felt as if he needed to maintain physical contact with Jack for the moment and Jack seemed to feel the same.

“So, you made me your Sentinel, hu?”

“Yes.” Ianto buried his fingers in Jack’s hair. “And just so we are clear, you _are my_ Sentinel, not the Sentinel of … whoever that was. - And how strange is our life that we are not even questioning this … vision?”

“I’m very glad to be yours.” Jack smiled warmly. “And for you to be mine. As for Bad Wolf, I think she was more referring to her part in creating what I am than laying any kind of claim to me. - And I believe what she said, that she is some kind of personification of Time. It felt … I witnessed the opening of the heart of the TARDIS once and the energy I felt then was the same I felt earlier.”

“So, Time is a sentient and sapient being?”

Jack shrugged. “In the era, I was born to, it was a widely accepted fact that Time was intelligent and adaptable. The Timeagency may have been a fairly young organization, but time travel wasn’t new at all. There was a lot of evidence that some things could be changed and time would adapt and other things would happen no matter what.”

“That would be fixed points, I assume?” Ianto asked.

Jack nodded. “Yes. Every time travel device would detect them and warn appropriately and to not heed the warning was heavily fined. I never bothered to learn the science behind it. To travel through time was just a tool for me, nothing more. I wasn’t very interested in learning more than I had to.”

“And we thought you knew everything about any object thrown at us through the rift!” Ianto exclaimed in mocked shock.

Jack grinned widely. “I never understood where you lot got that idea from!”

Ianto snickered. “Right, because you haven’t actively conned us all.”

“At one time that was my job description,” Jack confessed. “I guess it’s hard to leave behind.”

Ianto frowned. “I don’t even know your real name.”

“Javic Piotr Thane, that’s the name my parents gave me. But I have gone so long by Jack Harkness that it has become who I am.”

“Javic,” Ianto sounded out.

Jack kissed him. “I don’t think I should ever use this name again,” he whispered against his lips. “But it can be something just between us.”

“Whatever you’re more comfortable with,” Ianto replied quietly. He could detect sorrow in Jack and even though he did not know where this feeling was coming from, he would probably not use the name he had just learned, only so he would not stir up whatever sad memories Jack associated with it.

“It’s really not who I am any more. Javic Thane was a very naive boy who had not yet learned to handle his grief and desperation and who made very foolish decisions because of it.” Jack sighed.

“We all do at some point or another”, Ianto replied. “And some of us endanger the whole damn planet with it. - I’m so glad I could change your mind. I have no idea how I could have actually accomplished it to leave. It broke my heart when you said you would never be able to bond. Because what I wanted the most since you became more than my sounding board, was to drive away your loneliness.”

“To lose everyone around you, again and again, will become unbearable. It was easier to keep my distance, even if it was lonely. It was a difficult decision to let you in. - I regretted leaving after just a few hours. I wished I had stayed to give this relationship that had started to grow between us a chance long before it all went to hell. But before that … until the moment I left, I was terrified of the things that were growing between us. It had been such a long time…”

Ianto leaned his forehead against Jack’s. “I’m not going anywhere. Ever. You are not alone in this any more.” He frowned when he felt Jack shudder and not in a good way. “Are you alright?”

“I … It’s nothing. Just a bad memory.”

Ianto leaned back and eyed him worried. “Tell me about it.”

Jack shook his head vehemently.

“You are an open book to me emphatically,” Ianto reminded quietly. “Something I just said made you be overcome by fear!” He sighed when Jack remained silent. “You were wrong earlier, you know? When you said your emotional wounds were another reason to not bond because they would burden me. I’m quite adapt to work through any emotional input, especially such which is potentially traumatic. I need to be able to do that to function as a Guide. What will become a burden, is you keeping me out when every little thing could be triggering for you that for me seems unassuming.”

Jack pulled Ianto against him and buried his face in his chest. “It was the phrase…” Jack inhaled deeply. “I mean, all of it was already happening of course, but we only learned about it because of that phrase.”

Ianto rubbed his hands in soothing circles over Jack’s back. “What phrase?”

“The Doctor is presumably the last Time Lord. But someone told him a little while ago that he was not alone.” Jack swallowed. “And when I chased him down … where we landed there was a professor and we helped him to finish what we thought would be a rescue space-ship. But this man was not a human but a Time Lord who couldn’t remember that. He started to remember and the Doctor and Martha realized they had been warned about this man at the same time. He called himself Yana – You are not alone.”

Ianto blinked surprised and confused. He understood only half of what Jack had told him, but then he also suspected that Jack had left out a lot. But he got enough out of it to understand that he had triggered the memory of the beginning of the year Jack was so reluctant to talk about. “Was this Yana person responsible for your imprisonment?”

Jack took a shuddering breath. “He was called the Master and he used the Doctor’s TARDIS to disguise himself as Harold Saxon, all so he could enslave humankind and make Earth into a weapons-platform and make war with the whole universe.”

Ianto rolled his eyes about the pretentious names the Time Lords seemed to prefer, glad Jack would not see it. “You said earlier that you set back a paradox.”

“He made the TARDIS into a paradox machine to maintain the timeline when he used the descendants of Earth to enslave the population and kill anyone who dared to stand up against him. - You won’t let this go, will you?”

“I won’t,” Ianto confirmed. “I’m not looking forward to hearing you talk about being tortured for a whole fucking year. But I need to know, so I won’t make it worse. And to be able to help you.”

Without saying a word Jack prodded him to lie down on the bed until Jack lay spooned behind him, his hand pushed under Ianto’s shirt and lying flat on his chest right over his heart. Ianto recognized the whole posture as Jack seeking comfort, as him tacking the comfort he needed.

“He was fascinated with my immortality,” Jack eventually began. “Not the first time someone was fascinated with it, but in the past, it had always been a fascination born out of scientific curiosity. And somehow that had made it easier to bear. … He just wanted to see me die because he loved to kill and torture. He had found in me the toy that would just never entirely break.”

Ianto listened, lying still and being horrified by the way Jack was talking about these events and by the events themselves. Jack kept away from the details, but Ianto knew that it would not be the last time they would breach this topic and sooner or later he would learn all the gruesome details which chased Jack in his nightmares.

It was a beginning and Ianto was relieved about it, even so, they had a long way to go, in healing, in getting to know each other, in finding themselves as Sentinel and Guide. But Ianto felt that he was where he was supposed to be, where he belonged. He had felt adrift since he had come online and had been confused that Jack’s presence had lessened this feeling from the very beginning.

He had understood after Jack had come online.

Ianto would have never been able to walk away and he had felt that from the start, but luckily Jack hat not called his bluff and instead bought right into it.

  
  


**The End**

  
  



End file.
